The Problem of Well-Being: Respect, Equality, and the Self Peter Railton University of Michigan Very Preliminary Draft, October
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The Problem of Well-Being: Respect, Equality, and the Self Peter Railton University of Michigan Very preliminary draft, October 2006 (revisiRailton-USC-Rev3.docon 3) Introduction I will argue that we humans are built for inequality. Inequality across individuals, to be sure. We are descended from social apes for whom group membership, group exclusion, and social hierarchy are fundamental facts of life. But in an especially deep sense, I want to suggest, we are built for inequality across time. Some puzzles about well-being—at least, the sort of well-being that appears to matter to people when asked about their current feelings or overall satisfaction with their lives—can be resolved in light of this profound fact about us. The upshot is, I believe, that some rethinking is needed in ethics about both equality and well-being. Better understanding the sources of our motives and of our sense of well-being, and the ways in which our aspirations, motives and well-being are tied to inequality will, I think, lessen in some ways the moral importance of equality as such. It will likewise shift the way we should think about the relation of morality to well-being—whether one is a consequentialist, like myself, or simply someone who recognizes a prima facie duty of beneficence or self-concern. Consequentialism has always, I believe, been a good candidate for “a morality of respect for persons”. One interesting result of the reflections Rev. 3 below, if sound, is that this case can be made even stronger. All this sounds impossibly ambitious. It is. To begin, I’d like to express a few reservations about the notion that equality has intrinsic moral or non-moral value. Some reservations about the inherent value of equality Equality of material well-being. Imagine two worlds, Favored World Alpha and Favored World Beta, far distant from one another but not entirely outside the bounds of possible causal contact. They have no knowledge of one another. Alpha and Beta are favored worlds because fortune has smiled upon them. The inhabitants have more than enough to meet their needs, plenty enough to satisfy their wants, and yet more besides. Life on both Alpha and Beta has its usual ups and downs, of course, and there are illness, injury, death, and broken hearts in both worlds. But the level of misfortune and misery in each is about as low as one could imagine attaining with a population of intelligent beings with tender feelings. Turns out, people in Beta have a 1% higher material standard of living than those in Alpha. Perhaps a slightly higher proportion of Beta-dwellers has a strong interest in material production and accumulation. They have a slightly different work-leisure trade off as a result, and thoroughly enjoy this rhythm of life. They would be in fact be very slightly stressed by working less. Beta has an average work week of 35.35 hours vs. 35.00 hours for Alpha; as a result, Alpha dwellers have 2.2 televisions per capita, for example, while Beta dwellers have 2.222 per capita. Rev. 3 2 Suppose you were told you had a choice. You could push a button and make the next generation of Alpha-dwellers a tiny bit more motivated toward material production and consumption, which would result within two generations in equalizing material well- being with Beta, or you could refrain from pushing this button. Would there be anything to be said in favor of pushing it? Of course, if this would make those on Alpha 1% happier, that would be an argument for it. But people on Alpha are already about as happy as could be. So we are simply supposing a change in material well-being, the result of a slight shift in preferences, but a constant level of preference satisfaction. Or, leaving preferences unchanged, imagine that you face a different choice: you could push or not push a button that would make production processes on Beta 1% less efficient. This, too, would equalize the worlds in material standard. The desires of Beta- dwellers would be somewhat less satisfied, but only very marginally. Their overall happiness might be essentially unchanged, or it might fall a tiny amount. Would there be any moral or non-moral good realized by the equalization? Could it offset even this tiny loss in happiness? Of course, if Beta-dwellers were more materially prosperous at the expense of Alpha-dwellers in some way, then leveling Beta’s standard downward might have a moral rationale. But the rationale could be a matter of the injustice of exploitation rather than equality as such. Equality of happiness. Once again, imagine Alpha and Beta to be Favored Planets, as before. Now imagine that Alpha and Beta have equal material well-being, and that Alpha- and Beta-dwellers are all about happy as we can imagine intelligent beings ever being, except: Beta-dwellers differ from Alpha-dwellers in a tiny genetic detail, the Rev. 3 3 result of which is that they are naturally are capable of a slightly more intense sense of well-being when fully pleased—in much the same way that, for certain people, the taste of certain foods or enjoyment of chocolate is more intense. As a result, life on Beta is just a bit happier than life on Alpha. This difference, we suppose, is entirely unearned and “arbitrary” in that sense from a moral point of view. Suppose you could push a button and change this gene on Beta, so that dwellers on the two planets would instead experience essentially the same intensity of enjoyment level of happiness. Would there be anything to be said for this? Of course, you might think that the loss in intensity of good feeling on Beta would swamp this equality gain and argue against pushing the button. But the question is not the magnitude of this equality gain, but whether there would be any such gain that could even slightly offset the Beta-dwellers loss in happiness. Of course, if one could push a button and change the gene on Alpha, there would be a good rationale for doing that. But the rationale could be that Alpha-dwellers would be happier, not that they would be the hedonic equals of Beta-Dwellers. Equality of respect. It might seem obvious that equality of respect is intrinsically morally valuable, but this may be because we are thinking of inequalities only in a range of cases, where other dimensions of value also vary. Try to suppress all such variation. Back to Alpha and Beta. Alpha-dwellers and Beta-dwellers again show a genetic difference. Those on Alpha respect each other, just as those on Beta do, but the amount and resilience of respect is greater on Beta, again owing to a minor genetic difference. People on both planets are only mortal after all. Like us they can be pushed by stress, disappointment, or fear to fail to respect others fully. Ideal conditions exist, however, for Rev. 3 4 the rapid disappearance of such disrespectful thoughts once they appear. Individuals on both planets have the wherewithal for restoring their equilibrium and going on to live secure, prosperous, healthy, satisfying lives, so that the undertow exerted on respect for others fades. But there is, I said, a slight genetic difference. Beta-dwellers are slightly more resilient psychically, and so it takes a little bit more stress, disappointment, or fear to lead them to adopt an attitude of disrespect. Moreover, they bounce back from such episodes slightly more quickly. Suppose you could push a button and change this gene on Beta, thereby equalizing the respect shown for others on the two planets. Would there be anything to be said for this? Of course, if you could push a button and change the gene on Alpha, there would be something to be said for that, since then people on Alpha would show more respect for one another. But then rationale could be increasing respect, not equalizing it. You’re probably fed up with Alpha/Beta examples. So think of Earth. Suppose there is a genetic difference among actual humans that is normally expressed in differences in the resilience or intensity of the respect they have for others. People with the R allele, say, are harder to push into disrespect for others out of stress, disappointment, fear, etc. than those with the NR allele.1 Now this is also an inequality in respect. R individuals will, for example, feel and show respect for others in conditions where the NR individuals around them fail to do so. Suppose that otherwise R individuals are no happier or more prosperous than NR individuals—perhaps those more easily pushed into disrespect also have more gratifying experiences of restoring their respect for others, say. The inequality, then, is limited to respect. Suppose there is no 1 Currently, there is speculation that the neurological system regulating the concentration of neuropeptide Y explains some differences in emotional resilience in the face of stress. See Sherman (2006). Rev. 3 5 treatment to replace the NR allele with R, but there is a button you can push to eliminate the R in future generations. Would there be anything to be said for that? A systematic inequality in respect would be eliminated. Of course, there might be something to be said for looking for a way to make the R allele universal. But then the rationale could be increasing respect for others. Equality of reciprocal respect. One might be tempted to say that what matters is not so much equality of respect en gross, so to speak, but equality of reciprocal respect, i.e., respect of particular individuals for one another—agent-centered respect.